Ship Designer: allow viewing but not building unavailable ship designs
Allow the viewing of ship designs that currently can't be built because they require future tech. Based on a toggle button these future designs would be grayed out or not appear at all(current behavior).

Allow the AI to play itself.
Start a game with only AI players and watch the results.

Okay, I have some ideas, and most have probably been suggested, but I dont have the time to read through all 5 pages, so I'll just post them.

1) ADD MORE GOVERNMENT OPTIONS. Not every empire wants to be Republic, Democracy, or Federation. It would be nice to have more options, with specific bonuses.

2) Add more race portraits. This game is seriously lacking portraits.

And 3) This one may be difficult. In my opinion, it would be kinda cool to be able to know how diverse your population is. Instead of knowing you have, for example, 100B citizens, it would be funner to see that Humans are only 75% of that population, Torian are 10%, and so on. I dont know how this would be implimented, and it wouldnt really change game play, but it would fun to be able to see how diverse each world, and the entire empires polulation is. I know it may seem silly and pointless, but it would be a nice addition.

Thanks for listening to my suggestions!

I really like the idea of other kinds of governments. who says that a dictator has to stay in the dark ages. just cause you want to have control doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get your own different bonuses. i say creat a branch in the tech tree at interstellar governments were you can chose:

* Capitalist (++econ)
* Socialist (+moral/research)
* Communist (+production)

You can "label" these governments however you want. we have three different ethical alignments, why not have government options as well...

I realize that combining these different govs with certain ethics could be alittle over powering, specially if planed with specific racial bonuses. Thus the balance would have to be well thought out. but i like the idea of having an EVIL capitalistic society, or a "good" communistic society... i think different mismatches would add another layer of depth to an already amazing game.

PS. after reading through this i realize there is a difference between government types and economic strategies. ie: it is theoretically possible to have a democratic communistic state. Vice-versa its possible to have a capitalistic dictatorship... or even a "good" fanatical religious warmonger who values free enterprise but never puts out the ballot boxes... ...ok maybe thats too much detail... just a thought

I know most of these suggestions have been covered in other posts, but here is my opinion.

1. SPIES: I like the idea of passive spying to gather intelligence. This could be accomplished in one of two ways. First, you could just place the spy on the colony tile. This would disable nothing, but would make the spy harder to detect,i.e he is blending into the population and not drawing attention to himself by dis-abling an economic capital. There is maybe a sliding chance scale that he gets detected based on your intelligence level with that civiliation. As you move up to the higher ranks of government, the spy has greater chance of being detected. Maybe it starts as small as 1% per turn and goes up to %5 or %10 per turn as you gather intelligence. Also just because he is discovered does not automatically disable him. He still needs to be nullified the regular way. The other way this could be accomplished would be an option when placed on a planet to spy passively, actively, etc.. Maybe there could be an option to try and steal a specific technology, and you could fund the event in different ways that increase/decrease the chance for sucess. Either way it would make the espionage upgrade ability more enticing, as this would effect all of the above numbers.

2. Population/Moral issues: This needs to be tweaked down a bit. Otherwise the 300% farming tiles are joke. Either that or make morale tied in slightly to planet quality. Besides, people on a class 20 planet should be more happy and those planets should be able to support more people.

3. Auto-Lanch Ships: I would like the abililty to auto launch ships without having to send them somewhere in particular. Or, more specifically, auto launch a particular kind of ship. For example, I don't build contructors to defend a planet. There should be a governor option to auto launch a certain type of ship if built on any planet.

I would like more government types.
Such as Democracy or Federation, I would like there are governments such as Confederation, Union, Apsolutistic Monarchy or something else. It would be nice also if government types would be moddable.

That's an excellent Idea. I would like much more government types.

YES! Like Socialism, Theocracy, Capitalism, Communism, Fascism, Marxism, Nationalism, Totaltarianism, and so forth!

Here's my idea for improving the current espionage system:

It seems to me a bit unrealistic that spies are automatically detected when placed on a planet. They must be pretty inept at remaining under cover! How about making it so that you have a certain chance each turn to detect the presence of an enemy spy? That chance could be based on many things--morale, government type, tech level, etc.--but a great idea would be to establish a new branch of the tech tree that deals with espionage. Right now, there's really just one thing there, but there could be two extensive sub branches: one for espionage, and one for counter-espionage. A civ's progress down either branch would translate directly into their chances of successfully completing a spy mission, or successfully detecting an enemy spy. And spies should not be removable at all until they're actually "found."

Of course, it should still be possible to detect the presence of a spy by noticing the evidence of their presence (i.e. your manufacturing capital is mysteriously not functioning). And perhaps there could be a special function you could enable when the presence of a spy is suspected (like a temporary shutdown of the planet; increase the chance of spy detection at the penalty of reduced or no production, or sharply decreased morale, etc). But until a spy is actually rooted out, it should not be possible to remove it. This would make the current system far more useful, strategic, and interesting.

I would also like to see some diversity in spy missions. Perhaps let us destroy improvements altogether. Or make it so that the type of improvement a spy is placed on dictates the type of mission: place him on a research improvement and he focuses on stealing tech, on an econ improvement and he steals money, on an industrial site and production for that planet is hampered. Maybe something really interesting could be devised for placing the spy directly on the initial colony site; planetary subversion, perhaps? Who knows? Hopefully these suggestions are actually possible within the current GalCiv2 engine. But I certainly think that they should be addressed by the time we see GalCiv3.

I've already posted my ideas for improving the starbase upgrade grind, but let me add that another possibility is to simply make each starbase automatically contain a gathering point for ships so that I don't have to add them to each base I build. It should also take the same name as the base it's attached to, so that I don't have to name both of them. And if you would allow me to designate a module installation queu for each starbase, then all I would have to do is set a planet to build constructors, set the gathering point for the planet to whatever starbase I want to upgrade, then let the computer do its work; no need to stop and select a module each time a constructor arrives at a base. As Mr. Popeil says, "Set it and forget it!"

Overall, my opinion is that GalCiv2 is a fantastic game, much better than the mess that was MoO3, but several areas of the game seem to lack real strategic depth (United Planets, diplomacy, espionage, government types, and population management, for example). Each update makes the game better and better, though, so keep up the great work.

Thank you for reminding me. The only thing I liked about MOO3, was the council(forgot the name.) You, the player, were able to actually propose actions, and then the other nations voted on it. If they added that to Gal Civ, it would be AMAZING.

I want to support the idea of removing stacking effect for starbases.

That way they could be balanced both for those who build few (like me) and those who build 16 around their best planets. The only problem with this would be for influence starbases, but you could just put them stronger (but needing more constructors).

While talking about removing stacking for starbases, why not making resources non-stackable too? So only your best morale starbase will have any effect... Then resource starbases could make for good trading items.

It would be cool if you could put more than 1 construction module on a constructor - then use those multiple modules to get multiple SB upgrades with 1 constructor.

Personally though I'd prefer it if upgrading a starbase was like mining asteroids. IE it didn't consume the constructor, just took time to upgrade. That way you wouldn't have to build 100s of constructors every time you wanted to make a starbase.

What I would like in the update would be the following:
1. I would like to see more anomolies
2. I would like more space stuff like black holes, supernovas, ect.
3. What ever happened to the Terror Star from the first game? I would like to see them put that back in to the game. I loved blowing up star systems with it!
4. I would like a built in map editor.
5. I think the planets, stars and the galactic map be inlarged say by 100%. It would give the game a more realistic feel by adding more scale with the ships.
6. I would like more mega events.
7. There should be more planet types.
8. Civilian population and military should be split up! Not every person here on Earth is military personel so why should all the people in your empire?

I know it's a lot but I think the changes whould make the game more enjoyable.

Some thoughts from this little fox. For starters in the ship designer it would be really nice if adding a piece (whether jewelry or functional part) did not suddenly send me back to the beginning of the list. When making a ship with 100+ pieces of jewelry it gets really annoying to place a piece on your ship and then scroll through all the stuff you put on so that you can get to the piece you just added so you can tweak its alignment. I know you can technically just click on the piece, but in complicated designs this is still quite frustrating.

For spies I have been thinking and I believe the best approach would be to simply have it select the planet you want it to invade and a list of options would pop up for you to tell it what you want to do. Like you could have an option for it to destroy each type of building (research, morale, production, economy, production) but not be able to select specific buildings, reduce morale without dealing with buildings (IE reduce the morale of the populace on a planet without a morale building), just sit there and gain intel on that race, sabotage whatever ship they’re making, increase the chance of that planet flipping over (regardless of influence), etc. This way you don’t get the cheap tactic of seeing what buildings are on every planet in the galaxy just by making sure to have a single spy available. Also agree there should be the ability to research technologies for Espionage ability.

Give the option to completely remove all PQ 0 planets in a game, or change their frequency. It seems really pointless as it stands to be playing a game and find that half of the planets in the galaxy are all PQ 0. With the Extreme Colonization there should be significantly fewer PQ0 planets out there.

In regards to extreme colonization itself I have a few ideas. First to drastically decrease the colonization rush at the beginning of the game make most of the planets (like 90-95%) one of the types you need to research. Also drastically increase the amount of research needed to colonize these planets (maybe expand the tech trees to 4 pieces, 25%, 50%, 75% and then the 100%) as well as add the tech (more expensive than any of the other colonization techs) to give the Habitable class worlds a bonus (like a 125% and 150% bonus). This way in mid-late game there is still an advantage to having those Habitable Class planets over the Ocean class or whatever. Not sure how easily done it would be but it would be nice if the PQ could be tied in to how habitable you can live in that planet (like for a planet that would normally be PQ20 if you only had the first tech it’d be only a PQ5, if you had the third it’d be up to a PQ15). As for Super Adapters maybe instead of them starting with one or two of the starting techs for one of the habitats, maybe add instead like a 25% bonus to their ability to live in any habitat. With this they won’t get any over-powerings at the beginning of the game since they’d still need to research the technology to live on those planets but the bonus once they have that technology would be (31.25%, 62.5%, 93.75% and 125%).

I am of the mind that the anomalies should be something that should not be fully accessible at the beginning of the game (Survey module aside). Instead there should either be a branch in the tech tree dealing with being able to investigate certain types of anomalies (the higher tech required, the better average reward it gives) or anomalies should be something that comes gradually, like one showing up in each sector on average once every year. This way there’s still a point in still having those survey modules on your ships mid-late game. Now for specific anomaly suggestions: Wormholes should not vanish after the first person enters them. Instead they should be something that, though possibly only one way, is something that is static. It would add quite a bit of extra strategy if you not only have to guard your borders but also be aware that there might be a wormhole location or two that could land end right on your doorstep. The other is the research one. Instead of it simply removing 25% of the total time to research that technology, it should instead be a set bonus to your rp (or even make it branch dependent like giving 20rp to the first missile tech on your list). Though it can be useful when you’ve just finished researching if you’re like only 1-2 turns away from getting it anyways it’ll just save you one turn and then won’t give you anything extra afterwards.

Diplomacy should be given a boost as well, especially the treaties. The research and economic treaties should be mutual and the AI should be much more willing to share them (since they are getting a boost as well). What these two should be is more of a building block to getting them to like you more. Instead of having to get their opinion of you really high they should be willing to start sharing money and research points when at only a Warm rating when your diplomacy ratings are equal. This would also be nice if you could give/get one of these treaties from potentially every race. Also as for some things offered I agree that the enemy invading your territory unanswered should be fixed. I suggest either using the mentioned abilities of demanding ships in your territory be removed (if military (any non-cargo ship) ships then no dip relation cost)/ability to deny access to your territory. On top of this it should also not be considered an act of war (or a dip relation cost) to attack and destroy any military ship that is within your sphere of influence.

For the UP it should definitely be much more impactual (I know it’s not a word) to the game. For starters it should be much more often than once every year. For most games they only happen <10 times and often are turned down which makes them moot anyways. Instead what would be nice is the ability to dictate how often they occur (like 12/year) as well as the ability to bring up what’s going to be discussed. This could either be relegated to whoever everyone votes to be the leader of the UP or you can use up some of your IP to introduce a bill to the other races to have it voted on at the next meeting. Also it doesn’t really make much sense that only the races you’ve met participate in the council. I’ve played one game where I never met the Terrans the entire game (they eventually surrendered to the Yor) and because of which any influence they had would have been pointless since it never would have come up. I think what should happen is for the council meetings all major races should automatically be present, regardless if you’ve seen them yet or not.

Halve the effect of population size on morale and instead add an effect based on the ratio of pop:max pop. This way there are still costs to having large populations but not nearly as much and making the +300% Farm tiles not completely harmful. Or as an alternative make it primarily dependent on the pop vs planet quality. After all the planet quality more or less represents livable areas and 1 billion people would live happier in a place the size of China than they would the size of England. Perhaps use an equation like

Morale % Penalty= 50*(Pop/PQ)^X (X being some factor so it isn’t linear)

This way if you had 10 Billion on a PQ 10 planet you’d have a 50% decrease in morale due to the population. But if you stuck those same 10 Billion on a PQ 20 planet it’d only be a 25% decrease since there wouldn’t be as much overcrowding.

As a suggestion for the constructors and starbases, maybe make the constructors either work like the mining ships or the same ship. Instead of build a ship, send it out, upgrade the base in one turn then build a new ship, maybe have that constructor need to spend X weeks to fully upgrade and while upgrading its HP is drastically reduced. This frees up your planets so you can properly upgrade them or repair them (at a cost, of course, like 100BC/HP) without eating up a planet’s capabilities. As for the Starbases themselves they shouldn’t be able to stack abilities and instead just the best effect is used. Also for the Offense/Defense of the ships they should be based on your own military technology. Like instead of Starbase Attack 1 (normally a 1-1-1 bonus) it should instead simply place one of each of your best weapons of each type on the starbase and can be upgraded whenever you choose to using the Constructor. In the beginning of the game it wouldn’t really change much since the weapons would be doing 1 damage anyways. But in mid-late game where 1-1-1 is laughable if you had dmg 4 weapons then it would be instead a 4-4-4 (assuming you had a 4 in all three, else the other two would be whatever they would be). If you went to the third attack (normally like 10-3-3) you could instead have a starbase with an attack of 20-12-12, which is not laughable to any fleet at that point in the game. Course if you never researched the other two branches that starbase would only be a 20-1-1 or 20-0-0 if you never even researched the base tech. This also makes sense to me since why would a starbase be holding a missile or whatever if you’ve never researched anything from that branch.

I might think of more but this should be good for now. As for the one person’s statement about posting on the other threads instead of looking here I figure when trying to figure out what needs fixed and what does not which is the more efficient choice: to read dozens of different threads that each talk about a different topic that needs addressing and is probably a lot of agreement between people or to go to just one thread that has a general list of things needing fixed?

1) Clarify item descriptions on the big improvements (capitals, wonders etc) so that every single one explicitly states whether they apply to the whole empire or just the world they're built on. No more "manufacturing capital: increases your manufacturing capacity by 33%". I still have no idea which it does...

2) In the diplomacy screen where we trade tech etc, grey out any techs that are superseded by others we already have. E.g. if I have Titanium Armour I and III, grey out Titanium Arnor II so I won't trade for it by accident.

3) In the tect trade screen, add tooltips to items that can be trade so that:
(a) Techs show their description e.g. "allows Research Academies"
(b) Ships show a location e.g. "at Mars" or "nearest planet Iconia"

4) Printable PDF tech tree.

AI's need to break alliances with the human player. I play Maso level gigantic custom games. If I survive the early game, mid-game I've learned to make alliances with races and then build influence starbases to take their planets. Slow, yes, but a safe way in mid-game to expand territory to support a larger and better fleet. Later in the game, when I'm the largest or 2nd largest power, I make alliances with all but one race, attack and conquer that race, then break an alliance with another race and attack--and so on. Because I have alliances with the other races, they won't attack me even if they have an alliance with the race I've attacked. Frankly, I stopped playing my last two custom games because I reached a point where I knew I would win and the challenge (fun) was gone.

- AI's should break alliances if an ally places influence starbases in their territory.
- AI's should break alliances with a power if it gets too strong so they can form a separate alliance(s) to balance its power. If no single power or even several powers can stand up to the largest power, they should gang up and attack that power.

Also, I haven't seen the event in the last two games I've played where an accident results in an unexpected war with a power (I don't know if this was removed from the game or if chance kept me from seeing it). Especially in the later game, and especially if combined with AI alliances, this would add an element of uncertainty in the later game that would keep the human player on their toes and keep the fun going all the way to the end.

Otherwise, I agree with the comments about not going for realisim, focus on balance. Autofleeting AI ships in orbit is a great suggestion.

I think "Hotseat" would be what I want. It´s not real multiplayer, so I *think* it could conceivably done in a free update. There are no network problems to be taken care of, and if game balance gets a bit upset by two human players , it is okay, because that happens when you see what your counterpart is doing ( no real spying on him, etc. ).

Really, the game would gain 200% enjoyment for me, if hotseat multiplayer would be implemented. I could conceivably revive those excellent days of playing MOO2 hotseat with my friends.

I hate micromanaging the colony part. I'd like my colony ships to automatically seek out habitable planets but stop before colonizing. The screen would auto center on them and we could then pick and choose whether to colonize. All we need do is give them a general direction to search through.

How about stop telling me when Race A loses a space mine or planet to Race B? I just don't care and clicking on the pop-up is distracting. If it's my gain or loss, then I'd want to know but otherwise, I can go to Foreign Stats to see who has more Influence. And correct the spelling on Psionic Missile. The tech is Psionic and the description is Pysionic. Of course, I probably just mispelled some of my post but the names should match. Paul G.

1) An option to turn off re-centering the screen on a ship when you use the arrow keys to move it. Or, move the camera slowly to follow the ship as it moves, (rather than re-centering the screen where the unit used to be, then moving the ship.)

2) On the planet screen when you select an improvement in the queue and it shows the details, it should also show the cost. (Not in turns but in units as well.)

3) On the F6 screen, make that more useful with more tooltips and the ability to click on the social improvement to show a quick-pick of what's in the queue. For instance on the F2 window when you click on the social improvement you get a window that shows the social improvements in the queue. That's the one I'm talking about. That should be accessible from the F6 window too.

I would like to see a tab for my civ next to all the others in the foreign relations screen, so that I can easily compare my stats against all the others. I know that I can do this now, but changing between the screens is very clumsy and time-consuming; it would be so much easier to be able to go back and forth using the tabs in a single screen, the way I can do now with the other races.

'Soft' espionage. I agree with JW Swicord fully on this point. Perhaps you could allow a spy to be placed on an empty or unusable tile, so that it would gather intelligence without doing any damage. This would allow me to use my agent as more of a spy than a terrorist.

How's it goin,' guys? Say this isn't really an idea as much as it is a question. I had a blast designing ships in the original Dread Lords version. But after buying and playing the newer Dark Avatar expansion set, I noticed that contrary to the games description, there are actually LESS ship components to choose from. Example, even the ship's lights are not available anymore, as well as a whole bunch of stuff. Maybe I'm just crazy (LOL) or maybe this design bit is actually a regression in Dark Avatar. Does anyone have any explainations or tricks in tinkering with the games system to change this? I tried swapping files between the two versions but that only aggrivated the situation, of course:(. If there is no current solution, than I recommend to the 1.6 developers that they take this into consideration. Really these ships have lost some versatility.

(Referring to previous reply by me) I like playing as the Terrans/Humans/"Tiberians" (custom name).

I don't know if this is relevant just thought I would mention that .

Thanks, guys.

First off, WOW, what a great game. I haven't been this excited with a game since MoO. Congrats.

I can handle most everything in the game. But I agree that the spy stuff would be a nice tuneup on a release.

I also think a redo on the starbase upgrade would be a nice improvement. Perhaps upgrade the starport with the ability to add modules to all starbases within a range and it would do it automatically through time.

But the thing that I would appreciate the most wouldn't require much coding at all. In the ship design screen, it would be helpful if I could see what tech's I needed to complete to build a specific ship. Put the ship out there shaded and list the tech's needed to allow the building of the ship. I can't at least find anywhere to know what i need, and the research tree telling me i need 3 more techs isn't very helpful. Once that disappears, I'm left to my memory.

have the ai actually "want" and sell/buy infuence points.

All I have to say to this is, YEAH!
Why the hell didn't I think about this one? Very, very, VERY agitating indeed!

Ever realize how weird the word 'very' looks?